Aleph-X Official PCB rev Beta & 1.0

[Eric]

Adding outboard wiring and little boards flying all over the place is not going to help at this stage of the game.

Please don't get me wrong, an earlier post asked for suggestions, I was just naming one that occurred to me . Granted, now may not be the best time, but it may be an item worty of a future wish list

Peter: I had this thought at the same time as you. It seems adding more output devices would be a relatively easy point-to-point addition.

[grataku]

Please don't get me wrong, an earlier post asked for suggestions, I was just naming one that occurred to me .

Eric,
my aim was to simply clarify the situation, so no problem here!

Granted, now may not be the best time, but it may be an item worty of a future wish list

Absolutely, once the concept is developed the whole thing can be passed down to the EE dept. to squeeze the last watt out of the design.

[hifiZen]

Yeah, I think Peter got it right. Extra output devices can be added to a standard board with a little P2P wiring.

I've had several requests for more output devices, but I don't think it's appropriate to include them in this design, in light of the above... What I am going to do, however, is try and facilitate the addition of more output devices by making the board friendly to this kind of wiring.

I think carpenter is interested in doing some sort of extensible design for the addition of more output devices. My suggestion for this is a separate step-and-repeat style layout, such that one long board can be fabbed with many copies of this pattern repeated down it's length. Then, just cut to length depending on the number of transistor pairs desired. These separate boards could simply be tacked on to the existing design for more power. The P2P wiring is another option too. But, I should reiterate that at this point, we're concentrating on getting the basic design finished, tested, and refined before moving on to other things.

One step at a time...

[hifiZen]

Oh yeah, order count is now up to 32... keep 'em coming!

[till]

I don´t really understand why you don´t wait some weeks and put the carpenter and this board orders together with one design. This would be at the moment 68 PCB, quiet good for price. I´m sure in 2 weeks or so it would be 100.

[hifiZen]

...and one last thing:

Although we may not get to it in the Beta revision, rev. 1.0 boards will include multi-geometry footprints for common component variations (trimpots, power resistors, large caps etc.), in addition to the circuit option footprints. That way, there should be a set of holes which fit the particular parts you have on hand, or at least make it possible to get the part in without too much trouble.

The key word is: flexibility.

[AMPMAN]

put me down for some boards please clarifiy cost of individual board

[Peter Daniel]

Originally posted by hifiZen
My suggestion for this is a separate step-and-repeat style layout, such that one long board can be fabbed with many copies of this pattern repeated down it's length. Then, just cut to length depending on the number of transistor pairs desired. These separate boards could simply be tacked on to the existing design for more power.

That is another bright idea. One, long board, good for all versions and trimmed when needed.

If the design is nice and price friendly I'll be ordering at least 20 of them.

[hifiZen]

AMPMAN:

The pricing estimates are in the first post of this thread. The dollar figures listed are for <i>one</i> board, at the order quantity shown. Exact cost is not yet available, as it depends on the total quantity ordered, among other things. The more people order, the cheaper the boards will be. At present, I'm guessing we'll be doing an order for 40 boards, so pricing is extremely affordable. Sorry this is the best I can do for now...

[hifiZen]

I don´t really understand why you don´t wait some weeks and put the carpenter and this board orders together with one design. This
would be at the moment 68 PCB, quiet good for price. I´m sure in 2 weeks or so it would be 100.

till:

Carpenter and I are discussing this. However, there are some people who do not want to wait. The idea was to have carpenter's boards fabbed right away, since the design was ready to go. It will take much longer for us to finish the Beta design, prototype and test, then make changes for rev 1.0, and get that fabbed... However, I guess carpenter is waiting to gather more orders anyway, so it may just work out better if we combine efforts. I'm leaving this decision to carpenter, and the vote of those who have requested boards based on his design. Whatever the outcome, the Beta/v1.0 effort will be pressing on to arrive at a well tested design for general use. I'm sure we'll be posting more about this possibility soon.